Office: Biology Physics
Building, Room 125

Tel: 860-486-1889

Fax: 860-486-6364

Research

I study plant community structure and
dynamics - what plants occur in particular areas (and
why others do not) and how (and why) that changes over
time. I do this research in temperate marshes and lakes,
focusing on the relatively simple communities of
submerged aquatic plants, and in tropical forests,
focusing on the hyperdiverse communities of tree
seedlings, which represent the future of the forest.
Most recently, I have begun to study alpine and
subalpine plant communities of the Northeast. Here we
are looking for evidence of changes in species
composition that might be related to warming, nitrogen
deposition or changes in precipitation.

On Bondcliff mountain in New
Hampshire
Bigelow Mountain in
western Maine

Below
are several plants that occur only in the arctic and in
alpine habitat. These were photographed on Mount
Washington in New Hampshire, which has the
largest expanse of alpine habitat in the eastern United
States.

Publications

Capers, R.S.,
and D. W. Taylor. 2014. Slow recovery in a
Mount Washington, New Hampshire, alpine plant
community four years after disturbance.
Rhodora 116:1–24.Download pdf

Capers, R. S. 2008. Review of Flora of the
Northeast: A Manual of the Vascular Flora of
New England and Adjacent New York, D.W. Magee
and H.E. Ahles, University of Massachusetts
Press, Amherst. Plant Science Bulletin 54:
172-173.